Tour of UBI Student Apartments
Plus new classes, a new quarantine, and an update from a UBI graduate
To our dear UBI partners,
We have completed our first term of 2021 and are now well into the second. Time is flying! The students have studied Letters of John, New Testament Leadership, Pastoral Counseling, Christian Mentorship, Revelation, Christian Evidences, and others. It has been good to be back in the classroom!
Unfortunately, as of this week, Kyiv is on a three-week lockdown due to rising infection rates, and so we are all back online again. We are praying that this will only be for three weeks and that we'll be able to return to the classroom again soon.
We began our new semester after the winter break with a few new students. Our primary enrollment happens in September, but there are always a handful that decide to start midyear. Starting in the middle of the year can be a shock for new students, but these three have adapted and are doing well.
Life Outside of UBI
Some of you are familiar with what day-to-day life at the institute looks like, but almost no one has seen another big part of UBI: the student apartments. Being a UBI student is a full-time job, and so part of your support goes to providing housing for the students while they are in school.
Student housing in Kyiv looks much different for us than it did in our building in Donetsk. We made this video for you to see what life at home looks like for our current group of students.
An Update from a UBI Graduate
Fedor Chernichkin is a graduate who was taught the gospel while in prison by UBI instructor, Alexander Maliuga. Fedor eventually went on to plant a church in the city of Poltava. He and his family are hard workers who participate in many different ministries. One of those is opening their home to foster teenagers from the orphanage they work with. This last week, the staff at UBI received a touching letter from Fedor. It was so encouraging that I wanted to share parts of it with you.
This Sunday our congregation in Poltava celebrated six years together—six years have passed since we first shared the Lord's Supper here. We enjoyed a celebratory worship service and also showed pictures from the last six years of the congregation’s life. Looking at those photos, my heart rejoiced thinking about how much of what has happened here is thanks to UBI and the staff there.
I don’t want to take away any of the glory that belongs to Jesus Christ—without question it is 100% Him! But Jesus works through people, and our church’s anniversary is in large part thanks to those who work and have worked with UBI. It's thanks to your prayers, your time, your financial help, your patience, and of course your love! Our church's anniversary is your anniversary! You are working to raise up ministers, and then those minsters are going to different cities and continuing to make disciples of Jesus Christ.
My family and I are personally thankful for you. For the instructors who didn’t simply teach lessons but who showed with their lives the love of Jesus Christ. You gave us more than knowledge. Thanks to you, the students learned to open their hearts to God and to ministry in His harvest field. UBI helped me find myself and understand why I am on this earth, and that reason is to bring joy to our God!
I humbly thank all of you who have played a part in my life and the life of my family. Specifically, I want to thank Jay Don and Mary Lee Rogers, Alexander and Natalya Maliuga, Alexander and Irina Piletskiy, Dimitry and Yulia Grishuk, Valeriy and Ludmilla Kolchik, and to all those at UBI that I was able to share tea and candy with after class every day.
May God grant you all peace and grace through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Love,
The whole family at the Church of Christ in Poltava.
This letter is a wonderful reminder of what is happening at UBI. We are training spiritual leaders to go out into the field of Ukraine and make disciples wherever they are. Fedor and his family moved to Poltava because of the unrest in the east seven years ago. They never had plans to be there, but they have taken advantage of the opportunity presented to them. Praise God for their faith and work!
To all of you who help make these disciple makers, thank you. We couldn't do it without your partnership. After reading that letter from Fedor, it's exciting to look at our current students and dream about what God will do with them.
With love, and until next time,
Brandon Price
Moments from our morning chapel services…